


Been That Way for All My Time

by embroiderama



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, Vietnam War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-20
Updated: 2010-01-20
Packaged: 2017-10-06 12:15:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embroiderama/pseuds/embroiderama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Winchester knows what it means to fight his father's war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Been That Way for All My Time

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [](http://elanurel.livejournal.com/profile)[**elanurel**](http://elanurel.livejournal.com/) for the beta. The title is from CCR.

Ezekiel Winchester died in Vietnam before much of anybody cared about what was happening over there, halfway around the world. John didn't remember much of his father, but he remembered that last time he came home to see them; his uniform with the swell shiny buttons, Mama crying, Danny hanging in her arms wailing right along.

"Your daddy's a Marine," he'd explained, crouched down low. "We go where don't nobody else want to go."

He kissed Mama one more time and then pulled his bag up on his broad shoulders. "Bye, Daddy," John had said, because he thought somebody oughta and Mama wouldn't stop crying.

Zeke raised a hand and saluted to his son, smiling approval when his back went straight in response. "You watch out for your baby brother, you hear?"

John nodded and swallowed back his own tears as he watched his father walk away.

Months later, when the man came to the door and told John's mama that Ezekiel Winchester wasn't ever coming home again, she started crying again. They had the funeral where another man gave Mama a folded up flag, and even after that she cried so much that the house got real dirty and John walked himself home from first grade to find Danny stuck in his playpen with a bottle of sour milk and a diaper full and stinking from two rooms away.

People who came for the funeral came back after that, and the three of them went to live with Mama's sister and her husband on their farm. "You don't turn your back on family," Aunt Janey said, holding Danny and playing with him.

Things were okay for a while. John liked his new school well enough, and Danny had somebody taking good care of him while Mama slept and cried. After a while, Mama got sick from crying too much so Uncle Joe took her off to a hospital, and when she came back she didn't seem to care about nothing much at all. She'd sit and shell peas on the front porch and when John went to ask her a question more often than not she'd look at him like she didn't even know his name.

Then Aunt Janey got pregnant and had her twin babies, and Uncle Joe said eleven years old was plenty old enough to help him out on the farm because they were going to need more food now. So John went to junior high and then came home and did whatever his uncle told him to do. He liked riding the tractor, but mostly the work was just boring and hard. He'd fall asleep as soon as he hit the bed, even when Danny had the light on so he could sit there reading the books Aunt Janey brought him from the county library.

In high school, John's history teacher wanted him to switch to the college prep classes, said the term paper he wrote was as good as any he'd seen from prep crowd. Didn't matter, John knew he wasn't cut out for those classes. Researching a paper was easy; all you had to do was find one thing on the right subject, and that'd lead you to the next thing you were looking for until it all made sense. Anybody who couldn't do that wasn't trying.

The votech classes were better anyway because John got to work on cars. Seeing one of the old hunks of junk get pushed into the school's garage broken and bound for the scrap heap and then driven out again with the engine running steady and smooth meant more than any kind of words on a page. When John fixed the engine in the old tractor at home, Uncle Joe looked at him like he was something other than a burden for the first time.

It didn't really matter, none of it made a bit of difference when John knew where he was heading just as soon as the recruiter said he could sign the papers. They never watched the news on the battered old TV in the front room, but John read the newspaper whenever he could. The pictures from the war settled inside him and he knew the war waited for him, knew the men he saw in the pictures were holding a place. He'd lived on the Thomas' farm for ten years, but John was still a Winchester. Deep in his bones, he knew what that meant.

Two weeks after he graduated high school, he started basic training and then he had one last visit home before they sent him over to fight on the land where his father had died. When he got on the bus to go back to the base, his brother waved sullenly, his skinny shoulders slumped down low. His mother stared off to the side the way she so often did, but she'd squeezed his arm when he kissed her cheek, and when he turned to look out the window he saw her watching the bus pull away.

Nobody had to draft John Winchester.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Been Comin' for Some Time (The Rolling Rolling River Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/231825) by [osmalic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/osmalic/pseuds/osmalic)




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